To say that the 2013 campaign for the Dodgers has been trying so far is a bit of an understatement. They’re 17-22, in last place. They’ve had two losing streaks of at least six games. We’ve spent nearly as much time talking about whether Don Mattingly should be fired as we’ve had trying to figure out why there’s somehow a 140% injury rate among the active roster. Seriously — six starting pitchers to the disabled list by May 15. How does that even happen?

As you’d expect, the tone of Dodger fans has been decidedly negative. This team has been bad, and worse, they’ve been boring. Squawking over how a team with a bottomless payroll could be playing like this aside, we’ve spent a good portion of the season triaging the endless problems and wondering just how long they could circle the drain before it was too late and the entire season would have to be written off.

I’m not prepared to say that the team’s problems are behind them, because they aren’t. Injuries are still a problem. Matt Kemp still isn’t hitting for power, though he is at least hitting. The bench & bullpen remain a concern, especially Brandon League; Matt Magill & Chris Capuano are both in the rotation, which is far from ideal. But quietly, the Dodgers just took a series from a Washington group which is arguably the most talented team in the league, and they’ve suddenly won 4 of 5 — and Zack Greinke looked pretty good in his return.

We may be looking through Dodger blue colored glasses today, but I’m sick of writing about problems day after day. So as we see a glimmer of hope, let’s take some time on this off day to remind ourselves that there are some pretty great things happening this year. Here’s ten.

1. Clayton Kershaw

Nearly a month ago, I wrote about Kershaw’s greatness at ESPN. It’s hardly any sort of stroke of genius on my part to have pointed out how incredible he is — breaking news! Kershaw rules! — but over the last few days, he’s collected an increasing amount of national play. This is accurate. Clayton Kershaw is the best, and he’s the front runner for another Cy Young Award. I imagine you’d get no argument on this from his best pal…

2. A.J. Ellis

Last year, Ellis hit .270/.373/.414. That’s a .341 wOBA, and it was seen as a phenomenal success. So far this year, it’s .286/.385/.411 — a .354 wOBA — and somehow it still feels like it’s under the radar. We tried our best to get Ellis to the All-Star game last year, a campaign which did not go unnoticed. #AJ2NY? Oh, you better believe it. It’s difficult to talk about Ellis without mentioning…

3. On-base percentage

I know, I know. They can’t hit with runners in scoring position, so they don’t drive in runs. That’s an enormous problem, if not one that isn’t readily fixable. But before you can fail at driving home runners in scoring position, you need to at least have those runners on, and there this club is doing a wonderful job with a .338 non-pitcher mark that would be better than any of the previous three seasons. Is that because of Mark McGwire? Maybe. But this is also a different roster than in years past, and that starts with…

4. Carl Crawford

Forget Luis Cruz — no, really, please literally forget him — because there was no bigger question mark than what Crawford would be able to provide this year. If Crawford failed as the team struggled and Allen Webster & Rubby De La Rosa looked good in Boston, I really don’t know how the fan base would have reacted. While we were cautiously optimistic in spring thanks to his improved batting stance, I don’t think any of us expected this. Remember when “who hits leadoff” was the biggest problem? Crawford has more than filled that hole, leading the team in runs, homers, and steals, all with a .369 OBP and good defense in left. Crawford has been much more than the expensive anchor it took to get…

5. Adrian Gonzalez

Considering how much effort it took, both in players and dollars, basically just to get Gonzalez in blue, it’d be plenty embarrassing if he wasn’t hitting. Hit he has, good for a .387 wOBA that makes him currently #7 on the first base leaderboards. (Yes, James Loney is ahead of him. Good for him; whatever’s happening to him in Tampa was never, ever going to happen in Los Angeles.) He’s done that despite the ludicrous umpire-related neck injury that has slowed him for the last two weeks.

For Dodger first basemen over the last 55 years, only two seasons from Eric Karros and one apiece from Eddie Murray & Pedro Guerrero have topped Gonzalez’ wOBA pace; Steve Garvey never did once. I’ll happily take that without complaint, especially when this entire track was just an elaborate scheme to acquire…

6. Nick Punto

I will be the first to admit that there’s no way in hell that Punto is sustaining a .417 BABIP. When he falls, and he will, he’s going to fall hard. But maybe that won’t be so important later in the season, when Mark Ellis & Hanley Ramirez & Jerry Hairston are healthy, and Dee Gordon may have shown enough to stick around, and ownership has bought Chase Headley and 1987 Ozzie Smith and 1964 Brooks Robinson.

It’s important now, with everyone hurt and Cruz atrocious. Hitting .333/.418/.423… well, it matters a lot. That said, it’s still not quite as much fun as…

7. Juan Uribe

I’ve made this joke a few times, but I’m really, really enjoying Uribe’s character development from “hated super-villain” to “underdog man of the people”. He’s walking. he’s playing good defense. He’s walking. His OBP is .397! I actually got to write a post about him having the highest BB% in baseball. This is a man who was buried for the last two months of last year; this is a man who had absolutely no business surviving the offseason on this roster. He’s here. He’s playing. He’s necessary.

What a sport. What a world. Speaking of which, one year ago, none of us had ever even heard the name of…

8. Paco Rodriguez

Rodriguez hadn’t even been drafted out of the University of Florida by this point in 2012; now here he is, getting play for late inning work. While that’s ridiculously premature after 21.2 major league innings, it speaks to how much the team relies on him already. In those 21.2 innings, he’s whiffed 24, walking only eight. He is, almost inarguably, the second-best reliever this team has, which is more important than it sounds considering the struggles of League & Ronald Belisario and the injury troubles of Scott Elbert & Shawn Tolleson. It’s one thing to be the quickest draft pick from your class to make the majors for a September look; it’s quite another to make the Opening Day roster the next season — despite being out of options, and getting chosen over a veteran who was having a great spring in Kevin Gregg — and become a vital part of the club.

When I say “second best,” that’s no slight, because hardly anyone is going to top…

9. Kenley Jansen

Make Jansen the closer, because League sucks! Keep him as a setup man, where he can be available for the important situations! There’s merit to both ideas — I quite liked Jon Weisman’s look at Mattingly’s usage of Jansen this week — but the only truth is that Jansen will dominate wherever he is. After his repeated cardiac issues, it wouldn’t have been difficult at all to hear the sad words that Jansen was going to need to step away from the game for his own health. That would have been perfectly understandable. Yet here he is, not only continuing his previous success, he’s improving upon it.

His velocity is down slightly, though I consider that less of a concern than an indication of a man who came up as a newly-converted pitcher simply throwing heat who has now learned the art of the mound. Jansen has improved his BB/9 rate each year he’s been up — 4.36 to 3.05 to this year’s 2.11 — and the only reason he’s not discussed with relief stars like Craig Kimbrel and Aroldis Chapman is because he’s not collecting the generally silly “save” stat next to his name.

Jansen may not be getting saves, but if that word applies anywhere, it’s to…

10. Hyun-jin Ryu

Last week, I asked, “where would the Dodgers be without Ryu?” He came in as a complete unknown, but as the rotation fell apart around Kershaw, Ryu has been a rock. The two lefties have been the only starters who have shown any ability to go deep into games and rest an overworked bullpen, and he’s been good while doing it — he’s in the top 20 in K/9, the top 25 in FIP, and the top 50 in ERA, besting many much more well-known starters. On some teams, his performance would arguably make him an “ace”; on this team, he’s the #3 starter at best.

Again, we’re far from being past the troubles we’ve seen over the first two months. But nor has this season been entirely the flaming trainwreck many have made it out to be. There’s still a lot of good here, and for all of our sakes, let’s hope we’re seeing the start of things coming together.

As we continue what now appears to be a daily series of “what fans think is wrong with the Dodgers,” let’s move away from Dodger blue and into big, stinky Guggenheim green. Yes, for as many people asking for Dee Gordon & Yasiel Puig to come up, there’s a nearly equal amount attempting to point out — whether in disgust or joy — that a team with a $230 million payroll has some holes in it.

While frustration is understandable, it is of course ludicrous to expect that any team, no matter how expensive, is going to win all 162 games. With 93% of the season remaining, the Dodgers are at 7-7, just two games behind the Giants. (Yes, you heard me. The Rockies are 10-4, and they’re not for real. Mark it.) That’s with the handicap of losing their starting shortstop and #2 pitcher, so you’ll excuse me if I’m not ready to raise the white flag yet with a team that doesn’t even have a losing record.

Besides, if this is really about money, let’s look at the regular roster and see which group of salaries is lagging behind, shall we?

Check out the chart at right. Adrian Gonzalez & Carl Crawford, making a combined $41 million this year, are more than pulling their weight. A.J. Ellis is off to a fine start as well; Andre Ethier is somewhat behind his career norms, yet still safely above the current NL average for non-pitchers, which is .324.

It’s the second half of the chart that’s the problem, though Mark Ellis has long been expected to contribute far more on defense than on offense. What you have here is two of the three lowest-paid players doing the worst, while two of the three highest-paid players doing the best — and Justin Sellers is only in the discussion because Hanley Ramirez injured his thumb, a situation which will be rectified in the next few weeks. That seems like basically the scenario you’d expect.

We could do the same for the pitching staff, but the rotation is generally both well-paid and productive, with Chris Capuano‘s injury-shortened bomb last night being the first truly awful outing of the year. (And not only was he in a tough spot having sat in the bullpen for weeks, he was deemed not good enough to make the rotation in the first place, pitching only due to the crimes of Carlos Quentin.)

What this really comes down to are the same two things we’ve been talking about for a while. First, Matt Kemp is off to an atrocious start, and second, Luis Cruz has been awful. Kemp’s struggles have been beyond frustrating, and it seems likely that he’ll get the night off tonight to give him two days free before the team heads to Baltimore (!) to begin an east coast trip. I can’t say I know the answer to what his problem is — though I’ll note, again, how serious his shoulder surgery was and how foolish it was that he continued playing for a full month after being hurt last year — but there’s little we can do other than give him time to work it out. No, you can’t demote him to Triple-A — and yes, that’s a real suggestion I’ve heard, which is insane even if the team could legally do it, which they can’t — and if you must drop him in the lineup that’s fine, but it’s unlikely to have much impact. Whatever Kemp’s problem is, it’s not something related to his wallet.

As for Cruz, well, we’ve spent more than enough time talking about him. He was stuck in the minors for more than a decade for a reason, after all; the Dodgers gave him a chance, and it hasn’t worked out. Even then, I’m not sure what the team could reasonably have expected to do, given the market last winter. Did you really want Kevin Youkilis? Yunel Escobar? To give every non-Puig prospect on the farm for Chase Headley? It’s one thing to have money, and it’s quite another to have a viable option to spend it on.

I know we’re all frustrated by how this season has started off, but it’s really not about how much money was spent. So far, the expensive players have produced — other than Kemp — and the cheaper placeholders haven’t. The offense is still getting its share of players on base (8th best in MLB), so it’s really a matter of getting hits with men in scoring position. That, sadly, is not a tangible skill, inasmuch as a player is no more likely to get a hit with a man on than he is otherwise. It’ll even out. It has to, and simply getting Kemp right and either Sellers or Cruz replaced with Ramirez will go a long, long way towards that.

via @Dodgers, and *drooool*

Twenty-five years ago this month, the Tommy Lasorda Dodgers were coming off consecutive 89-loss seasons and merely hoping to get back to respectability. Kirk Gibson, Orel Hershiser and friends made sure that the 1988 season would be remembered for far more than that, and that’s the last time the Dodgers have tasted October glory — a full quarter century ago, the longest drought since the interminable wait for their first championship in 1955.

Since then, there’s been some high points (five consecutive Rookie of the Year awards from 1992-96, back-to-back NLCS appearances in 2008-09, for example) and more than a few low points (1992, every three-year deal Ned Colletti has handed out aside from Hiroki Kuroda, Kevin Malone, FOX, and the entire McCourt era). We’ve seen eight managers and 473 different men suit up for the club, from Eric Karros‘ 1601 games to the single appearance by Adam Melhuse and six others.

Yet what we haven’t seen is the team in the World Series, and for the last few years we haven’t even really had much hope of that changing. Sure, you can never count out a team with Matt Kemp and Clayton Kershaw, but few of us really entered the season with much hope. Remember, 2012 was supposed to be just about treading water with Colletti’s myriad back-loaded two-two year deals while the team was finally sold. 2011 was the true low point of the McCourt era, with the most fun game being “is this the week he defaults on payroll?” 2010 had two Ortizii — two! — and the Garret Anderson deathwatch. To say it’s been a tough few years… well, that’s an understatement.

But not this year. This year there’s a full season of Adrian Gonzalez instead of any James Loney at all. There’s hopefully healthy years from Kemp & Kershaw. There’s Zack Greinke, Hyun-Jin Ryu, & Carl Crawford instead of Ted Lilly, Joe Blanton, & Juan Rivera. There’s not Hanley Ramirez yet, but there will be, instead of Dee Gordon. There’s Yasiel Puig instead of Jerry Sands, and there’s Stan Kasten & Magic Johnson instead of Frank McCourt and his army of scumbag lawyers. There’s a shiny new set of upgrades to Dodger Stadium, and there’s still Vin Scully, thanks to whatever deity you prefer.

It’s been twenty-five years, and that’s far too long. This is the year where we can realistically hope that changes. Game. On.